Privacy Policy

CedarBell is software that daycares and small schools use to run check-in, family messaging, forms, and tuition. This policy explains what information passes through CedarBell, why, and the choices you have. It is written for the two groups who use the app: the schools that subscribe to it, and the families and staff those schools invite.

The school is in charge of its records

Your school decides which children are enrolled, which adults are guardians, what forms to send, and what fees to charge. CedarBell processes that information on the school’s instructions. If you want a record corrected or removed, start with your school; we will help them do it.

What we collect

From schools

School name, address, timezone and settings.
Staff names, emails, phone numbers, roles, clock-in times and certifications.
Billing details for the subscription, handled by Stripe (see Payments).

About children, entered by the school or guardian

Name, date of birth, class or room, and notes the school chooses to keep (for example allergies or pick-up instructions).
Check-in and check-out times, who performed them, and, when a guardian checks in from their own phone, the location reported by that phone at that moment.
Daily routine logs such as meals, naps and diapering, and photos or updates staff post to the family feed.
Forms signed on the child’s behalf, stored exactly as presented at signing.

From guardians and staff

Account email, name and phone number, and your password (stored only as a one-way hash).
Messages you send through the app, and notification preferences.
A kiosk PIN if your school uses the door kiosk.
Your electronic signature, drawn or typed, on forms you sign.

Automatically

Device and browser type, IP address, and pages requested, in ordinary server logs kept for security and troubleshooting.
A push-notification subscription if you turn notifications on.

We do not run advertising, sell information, or build profiles for anyone other than the school you belong to.

Children’s privacy

CedarBell does not offer accounts to children and does not knowingly collect information directly from anyone under 13. Information about children is provided by their school and their guardians, for the purpose of caring for and communicating about that child. Guardians may review the information held about their child through the app or by asking their school.

How we use information

To run the features your school has turned on: attendance, messaging, feed, forms, events, fees and statements.
To send the notifications you or your school have chosen, by in-app message, email, text or push.
To keep an audit trail of check-ins, sign-outs and signed documents, which schools are often required to retain.
To secure the service, prevent abuse and fix problems.
To bill schools for their subscription.

Who else handles it

We use a small number of providers to run the service. Each receives only what it needs for its job:

Supabase hosts the database and authentication (United States).
Vercel hosts the application.
Stripe processes payments. Card numbers go directly to Stripe and never touch our servers; we keep only a payment reference and the last four digits Stripe shows us.
Resend delivers email; Twilio delivers text messages and calls, if your school uses them.

We may also disclose information when the law requires it, or to protect the safety of a child, a user or the service.

Payments

Tuition and fees are paid through Stripe. When you save a card for automatic payment, Stripe stores it and gives us a token; you can remove a saved card at any time from Payments in the app. Questions about a specific charge or refund should go to your school, which sets the fees.

Retention

Attendance records, signed forms and payment history are kept for as long as the school’s account is active, because schools are commonly required to keep them. When a school closes its account we delete its data within 90 days, except records we must keep for legal, tax or dispute reasons. Messages and feed posts are retained until the school or the author deletes them.

Security

Data is encrypted in transit and at rest. Access inside the app is limited by role: a guardian sees only their own children; a teacher sees only their room; every database query is checked against these rules on the server. Signed documents are frozen at signing and cannot be edited afterwards. No system is perfectly secure; if we learn of a breach affecting you, we will notify your school and, where required, you directly.

Your choices

Update your name, phone and appearance settings any time in Settings.
Turn each notification channel on or off in Settings.
Ask your school, or email us, to see, correct or delete information about you or your child.
Close your account by asking your school to remove you; your signed documents remain part of the school’s records.

Changes

When this policy changes in a way that matters, we will update the effective date above and tell schools through the app before the change takes effect.

Contact

CedarBell · hello@cedarbell.app